Religions, which condemn the pleasures of sense, drive men to seek the pleasures of power. Throughout history power has been the vice of the ascetic.
quote by Bertrand Russell
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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To know the pains of power, we must go to those who have it; to know its pleasures, we must go to those who are seeking it. The pains of power are real; its pleasures imaginary.
Charles Caleb Colton in Lacon (1825)
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Power To The People
Power to the people
Power to the people
Power to the people
Power to the people
Power to the people
Power to the people
Power to the people
Power to the people, right on
Say you want a revolution
We better get on right away
Well you get on your feet
And out on the street
Singing power to the people
Power to the people
Power to the people
Power to the people, right on
A million workers working for nothing
You better give em what they really own
We got to put you down
When we come into town
Singing power to the people
Power to the people
Power to the people
Power to the people, right on
I gotta ask you comrades and brothers
How do you treat you own woman back home
She got to be herself
So she can free herself
Singing power to the people
Power to the people
Power to the people
Power to the people, right on
Now, now, now, now
Oh well, power to the people
Power to the people
Power to the people
Power to the people, right on
Yeah, power to the people
Power to the people
Power to the people
Power to the people, right on
Power to the people
Power to the people
Power to the people
Power to the people, right on
song performed by by Lennon John
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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This sense of power is the highest and best of pleasures when the belief on which it is founded is a true belief, and has been fairly earned by investigation.
quote by William Kingdon Clifford
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Made in Italy
The power of time is made in italy
Gucci and Versace are names of history
The present is here, it is literally
The power of time is made in Italy.
So did Ben, so did I
So did all, so did everyone
We buy names, we buy fame
In our hands we touch the dream and pain.
You see in town, it’s all around
The power of time, the power of history
You wear signed jacks, t-shirts and blues
This make you feel brand new and cruised
So did Ben, so did I
So did all, so did everyone
We buy Versace and taste Trussardi
We know the Prada, the same Armani and too Cavalli
The style is rule, the style is right of everyone, the sense of people
The sense of life is made in Italy.
poem by Alexander Galbur
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Your Acts Kept Practiced
While you were deciding,
Who was and who was not worthy...
The Earth beneath your feet,
Was being sold...
As you directed tactics.
While you were practicing,
Division and indecision...
Your own deceit taught you knew,
Was preparing to teach...
A lesson or two!
And now you seek,
A return to pleasures.
Those pleasures you fed...
To keep your nose up high,
And your disguise...
Being stripped from you,
Right before your eyes.
And now you seek,
A return to pleasures.
And without measure...
Your treasures have been downsized!
While you were deciding,
Who was and who was not worthy...
The Earth beneath your feet,
Was being sold...
As you directed tactics.
Your acts kept practiced...
Has entrapped you as one victimized.
poem by Lawrence S. Pertillar
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Pointless To Make Attempts WITH Common Sense
Is a power taken,
The same as a power given?
And how much power,
Does a power that has been taken have...
If those that did not give it,
Deem it as useless?
And if those who deem a power taken,
As being useless...
How powerful can that power remain?
And over what or whom,
Does one with useless power...
Have it kept in their minds believed?
It is pointless to make attempts,
WITH common sense...
To anyone who has money,
That money hoarded has no power at all.
It is only when it is distributed,
That the power of it is most effective.
One's greed,
Eventually defeats a blinded perception.
poem by Lawrence S. Pertillar
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Power To The People
Power to the people!
Power to the people!
Power to the people!
Power to the people!
Power to the people!
Power to the people!
Power to the people!
Power to the people, right on!
Say we want a revolution,
Wed better get it on right away.
Well, get yer on your feet
And into the street, singing:
Power to the people!
Power to the people!
Power to the people!
Power to the people, right on!
A million workers workin for nothin,
You better give em what they really own.
We got to put you down
When we come into town, singing:
Power to the people!
Power to the people!
Power to the people!
Power to the people, right on!
I gotta ask you comrades and brothers,
How do you treat your own woman back home?
Shes got to be herself,
So she can give us help, singing:
Power to the people!
Power to the people!
Power to the people!
Power to the people, right on!
Now, now, now, now!
Oh well, power to the people!
Power to the people!
Power to the people!
Power to the people, right on!
Oh yeah, power to the people!
Power to the people!
Power to the people!
Power to the people, right on!
Yeah, yeah, yeah, power to the people!
Power to the people!
Oh well, power to the people!
Power to the people, right on!
song performed by by Yoko Ono
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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If we seek the pleasures of love, passion should be occasional, and common sense continual.
quote by Robertson Davies
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Cross The Line
We have no way to see eye to eye
Through all the walls in their mind
These are the pleasures that terrify
So leave them behind
You keep the chains that are in your life
Well take flight of the dove
Theres only one way to satisfy
This feeling thats love
And Ill say it again, and Ill say it again
And if the power comes between us
Oh, Ill know what to do,
Im gonna say it to you
Cross the line tonight,
Take this chance and show your might,
All the worlds on the other side,
Cross the line
Raise a flag to a moral crime,
Well light a fire for this,
Make the papers by morning time
And lay in our bliss
So come on darling and share my mind,
There is no need to stay hid
cause all we are now is two of a kind
Can you believe what we did?
And Ill say it again, oh, and Ill say it again
That when the power comes between us
Oh, Ill know what to do,
Im gonna say it to you
Cross the line tonight
Take this chance and show your might
All worlds on the other side
Cross the line
Mother come to me now,
Take this hand now, Im afraid
Mother, come to me
Im bleeding
We had no way to see eye to eye
Through all the walls in their mind
These were the pleasures that terrified
We left them behind
And Ill say it again, and Ill say it again
And if the power comes between us
Oh, Ill know what to do,
Im gonna say it to you
Cross the line tonight,
Take this chance and show your might,
All the worlds on the other side,
Cross the line
song performed by by Spandau Ballet
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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What Power Mine Will Enfold You?
I incorporate choices
I incorporate changes
I incorporate divisions
I incorporate decisions
Power of ability is mine
Power of selection is mine
Power of preference is mine
Power of effectiveness is mine
Power to worship is mine
Power to dominate is mine
Power to destroy create is mine
Power to possess materialism is mine
Power to sow hate is mine
Power to seed seek revenge is mine
Power to consume self in lust fits is mine
Power to heal restore soul potentialities is mine
Power to love is gift mine
Power to embrace beauty sublime is mine
Power to twinkle flower into star shine wishes is mine
Power to absorb kingdom of God into immortality eternity is mine
All these diverse choices are potent yours or mine?
All which choices will you I embrace exert decline?
poem by Terence George Craddock
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No sane man can afford to dispense with debilitating pleasures; no ascetic can be considered reliably sane.
quote by Robert M. Parker, Jr.
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Oh What Pleasures
Oh what pleasures I have had
with just my thoughts of you.
I could not say them all aloud
for none would think them true.
Only I can treasure these.
Only I can know
what these pleasures have done to me
and where they had me go.
Into the garden under a bough
with no one there to see,
under the starlit evening skies
with your arms enclosing me.
Onto the fields in broad daylight
trying to avoid the sun,
succumbing to nature's mating call
We two become as one.
Oh what pleasures my thoughts do give
but never would I say.
I keep them silently in my mind
and pray they're true someday.
poem by Edwina Reizer
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Mistake not. Those pleasures are not pleasures that trouble the quiet and tranquillity of thy life.
quote by Jeremy Taylor
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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To be connected to America’s causes — liberty, equal justice, respect for the dignity of all people — brings happiness more sublime than life’s fleeting pleasures. Our identities and sense of worth are not circumscribed but enlarged by serving good causes bigger than ourselves. "Fellow Americans" — that association has meant more to me than any other. I lived and died a proud American. We are citizens of the world’s greatest republic, a nation of ideals, not blood and soil. We are blessed and are a blessing to humanity when we uphold and advance those ideals at home and in the world. We have helped liberate more people from tyranny and poverty than ever before in history. We have acquired great wealth and power in the process. We weaken our greatness when we confuse our patriotism with tribal rivalries that have sown resentment and hatred and violence in all the corners of the globe. We weaken it when we hide behind walls, rather than tear them down, when we doubt the power of our ideals, rather than trust them to be the great force for change they have always been.
quote by John McCain
Submitted by Veronica Serbanoiu
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There will be and can be no rest till we admit, what cannot be denied, that there is in man a third faculty, which I call simply the faculty of apprehending the Infinite, not only in religion, but in all things; a power independent of sense and reason, a power in a certain sense contradicted by sense and reason; but yet, I suppose, a very real power, if we see how it has held its own from the beginning of the world — how neither sense nor reason has been able to overcome it, while it alone is able to overcome both reason and sense.
quote by Max Muller
Submitted by Veronica Serbanoiu
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The Pleasures of Ordinary Life
I've had my share of necessary losses,
Of dreams I know no longer can come true.
I'm done now with the whys and the becauses.
It's time to make things good, not just make do.
It's time to stop complaining and pursue
The pleasures of an ordinary life.
I used to rail against my compromises.
I yearned for the wild music, the swift race.
But happiness arrived in new disguises:
Sun lighting a child's hair. A friend's embrace.
Slow dancing in a safe and quiet place.
The pleasures of an ordinary life.
I'll have no trumpets, triumphs, trails of glory.
It seems the woman I've turned out to be
Is not the heroine of some grand story.
But I have learned to find the poetry
In what my hands can touch, my eyes can see.
The pleasures of an ordinary life.
Young fantasies of magic and of mystery
Are over. But they really can't compete
With all we've built together: A long history.
Connections that help render us complete.
Ties that hold and heal us. And the sweet,
Sweet pleasures of an ordinary life.
poem by Judith Viorst
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The consciousness of the falsity of present pleasures, and the ignorance of the vanity of absent pleasures, cause inconstancy.
quote by Blaise Pascal
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Simple pleasures were all the pleasures that I knew as a child.
quote by Willie Stargell
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Full of an Emptiness
I am full of an emptiness,
Which empties me of my fullness.
I am feeding my starving ego,
While never nourishing my soul which can always be satisfied.
The spirit never ends but I try to tempt it with things that do.
Earthly pleasures, to find heavenly treasures?
Money, power and control do not fill me up.
I always want more.
I can never get enough.
Love, joy and peace.
I have none.
Yet it is all I truly need.
It is only this that will fill me up.
My spirit is allergic to the things of this world.
Yet my mind tells me to feast on more,
My mind is the starving pig.
Feasting on the droppings of the world.
And so I eat from the bottom, which is the world.
My living Hell.
Earth is chaos, Heaven is peace.
I look up and see an endless sky.
These are my possibilities should I follow the spirit.
I look to the ground and see how far is the fall.
But it is only once I have fallen, and hit the ground.
That I can get back up.
Rise above my circumstances.
Rise above the pleasures.
To seek and pursue the treasures.
That were promised to all.
Even before my time here.
If I get, what I give.
And what I give is nothing,
It is nothing I will get back in the end.
So why do I keep giving only what I can take?
Am I giving of things that have a beginning and an ending?
Or do I give what is endless?
The anger I feel because I thought someone was stealing from me,
Is really what I simply robbed myself of in the first place.
Peace, joy and love.
It is mine to share.
For if I share it,
It can never be stolen from me.
In the end, it is only my legacy I leave behind.
Money will be spent.
Power will run out.
Control will be lost.
To be without money is to be broke.
I am broken.
To be without power is to be powerless.
I am powerless.
If I get what I give, then I am what I am.
If I am control, then I am controlled and controlling
If I am peace, then I am peaceful
If I am joy, then I am joyous
If I am love, then I am loving and loved.
That is all I ever wanted and ever needed in the first place.
poem by Ryan Lee Morris
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The people who are regarded as moral luminaries are those who forego ordinary pleasures themselves and find compensation in interfering with the pleasures of others.
quote by Bertrand Russell
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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